BEIJING — Chinese police have charged a man suspected of running over a two-year-old girl who later died of her injuries and then fleeing the scene, in a case that shocked the nation, state media said Monday.

Surveillance camera footage that showed at least 18 people walk past the girl after she was knocked down on a Chinese street has sparked a public outcry and much soul-searching over the state of the country’s morals.

Hu Jun, 24, was charged with causing the wrongful death of the girl, nicknamed Yue Yue, in the southern city of Foshan on October 13, the official Procuratorial Daily newspaper said on its website.

Police in Foshan declined to comment, directing media to the Beijing-based newspaper, which has links to China’s top prosecution body.

Earlier reports said a second driver who ran over the girl as she lay bleeding in the street had also been arrested, but the Procuratorial Daily made no mention of him.

Millions of Chinese have gone online to watch the grainy footage of the incident, which took place in a narrow market street in Foshan.

The surveillance footage shows Yue Yue, the daughter of migrant workers, lying in the street for seven minutes before a female rubbish collector moves her to the curb and calls for help.

Several passersby can be seen stopping to look down at the girl before carrying on, and their failure to help her has triggered speculation the country’s rapid development and urbanisation has made people more selfish.

YouTubeA YouTube frame grab from the video. This image comes from before Yueyue is hit for the first time

China’s hugely popular weibos — microblogs similar to Twitter — have buzzed with the incident since the video emerged, with many online commentators hailing the rubbish collector as a hero.

But there has also been much soul-searching about why both the drivers who hit Yue Yue and the passersby in China’s wealthiest province, Guangdong, chose to leave her for dead rather than stop and help.

Earlier, Foshan police said in a web posting that Hu, who faces three to seven years in prison if convicted, had given himself up three nights after the accident.

BEIJING — A Chinese toddler who was ignored by at least 18 passers-by as she lay bleeding and unconscious in the street, has died, the hospital treating her said Friday, in an incident that has shocked the nation.

The plight of the two-year-old girl, nicknamed Yue Yue, captured the public imagination after surveillance camera footage showed her being knocked down first by a van and then several minutes later by a small truck.

At least 18 people were shown walking past the girl as she lay in the street critically injured, before a female garbage collector finally picked her up and moved her to the curb.

Several passers-by can be seen stopping to look down at the girl before carrying on, and their failure to help her has triggered speculation the country’s rapid development and has made people more selfish.

Millions of Chinese went online to watch the grainy footage of the incident, which took place on October 13 in a narrow market street in the southern Chinese city of Foshan.

China’s hugely popular weibos — microblogs similar to Twitter — have buzzed with the incident since the video emerged, with many online commentators hailing the garbage collector as a hero.

But there has also been much soul-searching about why both the drivers who hit Yue Yue and the passers-by in China’s wealthiest province, Guangdong, chose to leave her for dead rather than stop and help.

“The little girl’s destiny made us ashamed because she left this world painfully due to our indifference and neglect,” posted one commentator online after the hospital treating Yue Yue said she had died.

A commentary in Friday’s Global Times daily said the incident had exposed the “dark side” of Chinese society.

“The Yue Yue incident reminds us of where China is standing on the ladder of its moral development,” it said. “This is what happens in a modern society when many decisions are shaped at a fast pace.”

A senior official in Guangdong said the tragedy should be a “wake-up call” for society.

“We should look into the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the soul-searching bullet,” said Wang Yang at a provincial meeting, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.

Some commentators speculated that the failure to help Yue Yue was motivated by fear of being blamed for her injuries after a high-profile 2006 case in which a driver who stopped to help an elderly woman was later prosecuted.

Peng Yu, then 26, said he stopped after seeing the woman fall in the eastern city of Nanjing, but she accused him of knocking her down with his car, and a court later ordered him to pay her 45,000 yuan in damages.

“The judge in Peng Yu’s case in Nanjing has destroyed the kindness of a whole nation and it is difficult to recover,” wrote one weibo user on Friday.

Retired sociologist Xia Xueluan of Peking University said the Peng Yu case was a turning point in recent Chinese history, after which many people feared a backlash for doing the right thing, the way heroes of his childhood always did.

“After Peng Yu, this is China’s moral quandary. When we were small, we had no such trouble knowing right from wrong. We had Lei Feng to look up to,” Xia told AFP.

Lei Feng was a Chinese army soldier whose selfless service to the Communist Party, Chairman Mao Zedong and China’s people was immortalised in a nationwide propaganda campaign targeting the country’s youth after his death in 1962.

“Today, we have no Lei Feng,” Xia said.

Psychologist Hu Shenzhi of the Guangdong Sunflower Counseling Center said Chinese today are stressed knowing that social services have not developped as fast as the economy, so many fear debt if they fall ill or are in an accident.

“Under the circumstances, there’s slim chance of helping others. If the two drivers stopped to help the kid, they wouldn’t have had the chance to get away, then they would be asked to pay lots of money,” Hu told AFP.

“As for the 18 passers-by, if they helped, they would probably be blamed for causing the accident. In China, everyone’s trying to protect himself,” he said.

Police in Foshan said the drivers of both vehicles that hit the young girl had been detained and would face trial.

One was detained the night of the accident and the other gave himself up three days later, police said.

JAKARTA — A two-year-old Indonesian boy who smoked about 40 cigarettes a day has kicked the habit after receiving intensive specialist care, a child welfare official said Thursday.

Ardi Rizal shocked the world when a video of him drawing heavily on cigarettes appeared on the Internet in May and drew attention to Indonesia’s failure to regulate the tobacco industry.

“He has quit smoking and the most important thing is he doesn’t ask for cigarettes anymore,” national commission for child protection secretary-general Arist Merdeka Sirait told AFP.Six months after his father gave him his first cigarette, the overweight boy was smoking two packs a day and threw violent tantrums if his addiction was not satisfied.

Accompanied by his mother, the boy left his village on Sumatra island in July to undergo treatment in the capital.

“He received psychosocial therapy for one month, during which therapists kept him busy with activities and encouraged him to play with kids of the same age,” Sirait said.

“We diverted his addiction from cigarettes to playing.”

Ardi’s case has highlighted the tobacco industry’s aggressive marketing to women and children in developing countries like Indonesia, where regulations are weak and many people do not know that smoking is dangerous.

Sirait said the government had given financial support to Ardi’s parents, who were ignorant of smoking’s dangers and used cigarettes to keep the toddler happy as they worked long hours at a street market.

“Ardi was very happy when he left Jakarta this morning as he has really missed his father in the village,” Sirait said.

Cigarette consumption in the Southeast Asian archipelago of some 240 million people soared 47 percent in the 1990s, according to the World Health Organization.

Tim Fraser/National PostToronto Police officers investigate the scene at Eglinton Avenue and Martin Grove Road where a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car Tuesday Jan. 12, 2009. The woman was trying to cross the street with her child in a stroller, and is said to have pushed the stroller out of harm's way before being struck.

“The woman was babysitting along with the toddler’s grandmother when the accident occurred. The woman was reportedly leaving the home to pick up another child when she accidentally struck her niece while backing out of the driveway.”

“As the two-year-old played outside his home, his mother began backing out of the driveway and struck him, causing fatal injuries. Paramedics attended the scene but were unable to revive the young victim.”

According to Safe Kids Canada, the number of children injured as pedestrians goes up in May and June (as well as September and October). It is likely because children are outside more at those times of year, said Kristen Gane, a spokeswoman for the organization:

“They’re out and about more in the spring. The weather’s better. Children that may have been driven to school are walking again and may be rusty in their pedestrian-safety behaviour.”

Incidents involving driveways are extremely rare, Ms. Gane stressed. “To have two so close together are a bit of anomaly.”

Pedestrian incidents are one of the leading causes of childhood severe injury and death in Canada — mainly involving kids crossing at controlled intersection or suddenly running out into a road.